Dangerous blood pressure peaks among blacks occur five times more often than average

CHICAGO, Sept. 7, 2018 – According to a study presented at the 2018 Joint Scientific Sessions on the American Heart Association 's hypertension, black adults have dangerous peaks in hypertension, called seizures. hypertension, at a rate five times higher than the national average. an annual conference on recent advances in hypertension research.

Hypertensive crisis is a complication of high blood pressure in which blood pressure rises rapidly and severely to potentially lethal levels. People can often avoid this escalation of blood pressure by keeping their blood pressure under control with medication and lifestyle changes.

"We have studied a population of deprived neighborhoods to find that being black is a risk factor for switching from hypertension to a hypertensive crisis," said study author Frederick A. Waldron, MD , MPH, MS. , Newark, New Jersey. "Now that we have effective antihypertensive drugs, a hypertensive crisis and a hypertensive emergency, a rare but more advanced progression of the hypertension crisis in which organic lesions occur. should not exist at this point in black or other patients. "

In what Waldron claimed to be the largest case study to date on patients with hypertensive crisis, the researchers reviewed emergency medical records of more than 15,000 patients from 2013 to 2016.

They defined the hypertensive crisis as a blood pressure greater than or equal to 200/120 mmHg and found:

Nearly 1,800, or 11.4% of the 15,631 hypertensive patients who went through the emergency department during the three years of the study, were in hypertensive crisis.

Nearly 90% of people with hypertensive crisis were black.

One in four, or 25%, with a hypertensive crisis developed catastrophic organ failure, including stroke, congestive heart failure, kidney failure or heart attack.

Being over 65 years old or being a man, having anemia, chronic kidney disease or a history of stroke and cardiovascular disease, including a high cholesterol, predicted an increased risk of hypertension. Anemia has never been identified before as a risk factor for hypertensive urgency, according to Waldron.

Insurance status and access to primary care did not affect patients' chances of having a high blood pressure crisis.

"There is no good treatment for organ damage, so the best way to solve this problem is to develop a preventative strategy," Waldron said. He suggests that efforts to help patients take their medications properly could help reduce high blood pressure crises.

The numbers in the study may be underestimated because of the different definitions of the hypertension crisis. For example, the American Heart Association defines it as a blood pressure greater than or equal to 180/120 mmHg. This study defined the hypertensive crisis as greater than 200/120. Waldron said that future studies should determine the rate of adherence to medications for blood pressure and follow patients with hypertension for longer to determine the true incidence of hypertension.